a yogini, reclaiming my creativity, learning how to be me.

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Did you know that Propofol burns? I didn’t. I had never had any type of anesthesia before Saturday. The anesthesiologist explained that I might feel a bit of discomfort. As soon as I felt the searing in my veins, I began to whimper. He said, “It will only burn for a few seconds.” Then he began to count. He got to six, and I woke up in another room, shivering, with my sister sitting next to me.

She asked, “How are you feeling?”

I replied, “I’m cold.”

She nodded. “It is cold in here.” There was a blanket draped over my lap and she tugged it up to my chin.

The assistant came in, gave me a super sanitary napkin and told me to take my time, that the doctor would come in shortly.

I asked my sister, “Am I bleeding? I feel like I’m bleeding.”

She shook her head. “You’re not bleeding. Can you sit up? You should get dressed.” She held my leggings in her lap.

I sat up and wiggled my fingers. The IV was still attached to my hand, and it tingled. “My hand feels weird,” I said. “Whatever they gave me burned like hell.”

She laughed. “Was it white? It was probably Propofol.”

“Propofol? You mean the shit that killed Michael Jackson?”

“Yes, Keisha, the shit that killed Michael Jackson. It works fast.”

“Well it hurts.”

She smiled. “Can you stand up?”

I nodded and she helped me slide down from the elevated seat. The paper underneath me was stained brown. “That looks like blood,” I said.

“It’s just the betadine,” she replied. “I promise you’re not bleeding.”

She helped me get dressed. The anesthesiologist came back in and gave me some Percocet. The heaviness I’d been feeling in my pelvis dulled. My doctor told me he’d see me in two weeks. I paid my fifteen dollar co-pay and stumbled out of the office.

My sister’s car was only two full blocks away, but it seemed like a mile.

I am on the phone with Lesley. I am explaining to her that my doctor seemed alarmed at how much my fibroid had grown since my last visit in July. I explain what a hysteroscopy is, and I describe the curette I had seen waiting for me, glinting under the fluorescent lights. I tell her about the Propofol burning all the way up to my elbow, about the way my hand was sore for two days, about how I felt okay until the Percocet finally wore off and then I couldn’t move, about how I had to wear these giant, uncomfortable pads because my period arrived early. She is quiet, and then my phone lets me know I have another call. It’s my doctor. It is nearly nine o’clock at night.

“I just wanted to give you some good news,” he says. “I got your test results back from the lab. You’re fine. We’ll discuss more when you come in for your post-op, but I don’t think we need to do anything about it right now.”

I thank him and click back over. I tell Lesley what my doctor has just told me. She cries.

“You told me they were testing your tissue and I was like please God no, not my best friend.”

When I lie on my stomach, I can feel my fibroid pressing into my skin. It is 8 cm by 7 1/2 cm, roughly the size of a baseball. It is in the wall of my uterus and leans on my bladder. I drink a lot of water, usually two liters a day, and I’ve become an expert at discerning when I actually have to use the bathroom. Three months ago I switched from super tampons to super plus. I remember my mother’s soiled pants hanging in the laundry room every month and I am just grateful my bleeding isn’t that bad, yet.

An excerpt from a journal entry written on August 13, 2006 at 8:19 pm, while I was on vacation with Marvs and my sister:

“On Swimming

You wake up sore the next day, wondering what you’d done to be in such pain. It’s sort of like sex that way. Right now my shoulders hurt after showing off my skills in the water. The butterfly stroke is not as easy as it used to be.

I like deep water. It’s more of a test– of my strength, of my commitment. Sadly, I always forget: the deeper the water, the more difficult it is to come up for air.

[Redacted] was probably only seven feet deep. Deep enough to completely cover my head. Deep enough to drown in. Deep enough that I can’t just pop out of the water and gasp for air. So I shouldn’t beat myself up for wishing that things could be the way they used to be. That I could be here, on St. Maarten, missing him and his grin, while he’s back at home, missing me, too.”

I take great pains to avoid the subjects of dating and relationships entirely. If you’re not my sister, Michelle, or Johara, you basically have no idea what’s going on in my romantic life. Most of this is just due to my secretive Scorpio nature (“But,” you protest, “you write a personal blog!” I know, I know. Perhaps that’s why I don’t post very often?). The other part of it is… the more I discuss dating and relationships, the more I have to examine the reasons why I am the perpetually single friend.

I find myself reading A Belle in Brooklyn‘s Ask.FM page nearly every day for two reasons: 1) because people ask some outlandish questions and 2) her answers are straightforward and often HILARIOUS. A few months ago, a girl wrote in asking her what to do because the dude she’d been dating and wanted a relationship with was flying to another city to visit some woman. She was understandably hurt and asked how to get past it. Demetria told her:

You get through hurt. You don’t pass it by. Sit with it. It’s okay to hurt. Just don’t sink in it.

I read that, and something clicked. I found my journal from that summer and read the whole thing. And I realized– I allowed myself to sink.

It wasn’t that deep. But I let the crushing weight of my hurt force me to the soft, sandy ocean floor, just yards away from the shore. And I’ve been floating here, for years. I learned how to breathe. It’s nice and warm and peaceful. I am alone and I prefer it that way.

After him, I chose a long string of unavailable men. That worked just fine for me. There was the startlingly handsome guy whose last girlfriend had cheated on him (and humiliated him, apparently. I don’t remember all the details) and so he became an avowed bachelor. There was the artistic guy whose girlfriend had also cheated on him; this one took her back and cheated sporadically with me for revenge. Then there was the dude who’d been in a relationship for over five years, was newly single, and just wanted have some fun. He was the one who pointed out to me how utterly unavailable I was. He was really into the law of attraction and told me, “My dear, I don’t believe in coincidences. You keep meeting unavailable men because that is who you are. You’re not available at all. You’ve got a fucking fortress around your heart and you don’t even know it.” I’m pretty sure I just laughed at him and brushed it off.

It’s been eight years since that trip to St. Maarten, and a little over six years since I sat in E’s car, and he turned up the volume when Omarion’s “Ice Box” came on the radio and he pointed at me, laughing, saying, “This is so you.” The last guy I dated told me he’d never met anyone as cold as me. I have to admit, it kinda hurt my feelings at first. But I dismissed him, telling myself that he was just mad I no longer wanted to date him, that he was just desperate to push my buttons, to elicit one last reaction out of me before I walked away.

Again: gorgeous. I hope you take yourself seriously as a writer because your work this semester has been stellar…I think I may have already told you that.

I swear I did not mean to abandon this blog for over two months. I have been really, really busy. I just finished up my writing class at the New School. Last night was our final class, and this was a part of the comment my professor wrote on my submission. The last time she gave me such effusive praise, I posted a picture of it to my Instagram account. I’ve been thinking about her words all day: I hope you take yourself seriously as a writer because your work this semester has been stellar. I hope you take yourself seriously as a writer. Take yourself seriously. As a writer. Because your work this semester has been stellar. Your work this semester has been stellar. Stellar.

Pretty sure I’m going to enroll in the Advanced Fiction Workshop at the New School this summer.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not really a fan of Rick Ross. Or French Montana. However, I am a fan of Sean Combs, for no other reason than he told us that he won’t stop, and he hasn’t. I first heard this song last week on my way home from the gym. I was not particularly enthralled by the song itself– I tend to dislike remakes– but I did enjoy Diddy’s monologue, which is interspersed throughout the song. Ross won’t divulge to whom this rant of sorts was addressed, which just adds to my amusement. Despite Diddy’s liberal use of the N-word, I think he’s got a pretty interesting message (I’m also ignoring the fact that he was likely referring to himself as God…).

I think that once you quit the job that’s paying the bills, the entire universe comes out to meet you. But it’s only after you quit your job that those people arrive, and that’s the secret that nobody knows. When you’ve made the leap and you’re far from shore, nothing is guaranteed, but we do it together and that’s what makes it worth it.

Read the rest here. There’s a very interesting bit about her applying to nine law schools and getting rejected by all of them. Then she applied to two art schools. When she was accepted to both, she took that as a sign. (Kinda reminds me of my seven failed bar attempts.)

On the beach in Montezuma, I met a guy from Kentucky. I don’t even know how work came up. He was ex-military, had his house in Lexington on the market, and was just hanging out in Costa Rica until it sold. He said that he and his friend were moving to Los Angeles to work as screenwriters. I told him what I do. And he said, “You should quit your job.” My friend said, “I keep telling her. She won’t listen.”

If only it were that simple. But I can’t shake the idea that I am not the kind of person for whom a safety net will magically appear. That I will leap and land head-first on the concrete below.

Gallo pinto and eggs and the sweetest pineapple you’ll ever taste for breakfast. White-water rafting on Rio Sarapiqui. Mountain biking around Volcan Arenal. Vinyasa yoga in an open-air pavilion overlooking the Pacific, the sounds of the ocean and birds and white-faced capuchins and air moist with promise surrounding you in savasana. Snorkeling in the shimmering green waters of Isla Tortuga. Mornings in the hammock, Centenario and Coke at night. Even the rum tastes better there.

I am listening to this freezing rain as it falls. Chunks of snow are crashing from the roof. The squirrels in the crawl space above my head are playing soccer. The radiator hisses. The new mayor says he went to the gym before he shoveled the heavy, wet snow from the sidewalk in front of his Park Slope home; he advises City residents not to do this. His Spanish is better than the old mayor’s, but not much. I am wondering whether I will hold my community class tonight. It doesn’t look very bad from my window, and there are cars whizzing past the house every few minutes. I can hear the tires slice through the water and connect to the asphalt below. I have just finished reading “The Girl Who Flew,” by Camellia Phillips. I told myself I should read more literary journals, so I subscribed to Calyx. I’ll treat myself to Callaloo when I come back from Costa Rica. Maybe I should read The House on Mango Street again. I bought it on Friday and read it on Saturday; it’s the first assignment on the syllabus of the experimental fiction class I’m taking at The New School, taught by Sharon Mesmer. Last week was our first session. She asked what I was reading, so I told her. I told her that I sleep with books in my bed. How I can’t stop thinking about words. She told me that just means I’m a writer. I have to pack, but I don’t want to stop reading. Maybe I will just pack my books for now. I bought a bright orange backpack for this trip; it matches my cashmere travel scarf. I am going to fill it with books and snacks. And panties, just in case our luggage gets lost. I am still listening to this freezing rain as it falls. It sounds like sweet music. It sounds like a promise. It sounds like now.

When I first started this job, I kept my script at my desk, hidden beneath my notepad, and I would read from it as discreetly as possible.

Nearly six years later, the script flows out of my mouth before I can even think about it. Sometimes I rattle it off so quickly, while my mind is elsewhere, that when I come to the end of my speech I forget where I am, what else I’m supposed to be saying. I grapple for the right words to explain to people who don’t really want to hear what I have to say the reasons why they are ineligible for a benefit to which they feel entitled.

I can read the script with my eyes closed. I can recite it in my sleep. Sometimes I think that I’ll still remember it a decade from now, when, God-willing, I’m doing something totally unrelated to this, and that I’ll turn to whoever is around and give my brief speech, introducing myself and explaining the clients’ rights. And when I finish, my partner, my kid, my student, whoever has heard this nonsense will look at me, confused, and ask, “What are you TALKING about?” And I’ll laugh because I don’t have the words to share my experiences here.

When my alarm went off this morning, I cried. I actually woke up at 2:30 am, after a nightmare about having a huge argument with a client outside of the building, and when I glanced at my phone I realized I had five hours of sleep left. But I didn’t, couldn’t, fall back to sleep so I just laid there, listening to the infomercials on TV. I was awake when my alarm finally rang, and the first words out of my mouth were: I don’t want to go.

I sleep with books in my bed, at least ten of them. During law school, I picked up the bad habit of reading three or four books at a time. I would read fifty pages of one, seventy pages of another, then flit back and forth in between until I finished them all. And I’d start all over with a new set of books, never paying close attention, sometimes setting aside a book and forgetting about it, coming back to it months later. Because I was always reading a bunch of books, I kept them as close to me as possible– in my bed, so when I grew tired of one, my next option was within reach. I spent a lot of time in law school reading books that had absolutely nothing to do with the law. I broke myself of the multiple-book habit during the last six months of 2013; I began reading one book a week in June. But I still like to have my books near to me. I like to have choices.

So I have these ten books in my bed. And two stacks of books on the floor next to my bed; those are the books I’m planning to read next. I have a heavy wooden chest at the foot of my bed. When I was a child, it was full of toys. Now it is stuffed with books. But I can’t get to them easily because there are two boxes of books on top of the chest. There is no more room on my shelves. I have four more boxes of books in the basement. There are books everywhere.

Still, I buy more. I blame my father for this habit. When I was in third grade, he bought me one book every weekend for the entire year. My teacher, Mrs. Zullo, had gifted me a few of her vintage Nancy Drew books (I still have them) and when I devoured those and asked for more, he took me to B. Dalton Bookseller and bought me a few of the updated versions. We fell into a pattern; he’d pick us up from school on Fridays, and take us to the mall. I’d get a new book. My sister would get a small toy. He would treat us to McDonald’s and I’d open up my new book and eat my cheeseburger (with extra pickles!) without even looking at it. Eventually, my mother realized how much money my father was spending on books for me, and she encouraged him to take me to the library instead. But it was too late; the damage was already done. I still prefer my books untouched by others. I like them fresh and new, no dog-eared pages or stains or cracked spines. I keep my books because, if I like them, I’ll always read them again. My copy of Waiting in Vain is yellow and worn and I’ve read it every year for the last twelve years.

I’ll buy dozens of books at a time. Last year, I bought three of Danzy Senna’s books (You Are Free, Symptomatic, and Where Did You Sleep Last Night?) in one night. I have everything written by Junot Diaz, Chris Abani, M. Evelina Galang (all VONA instructors), as well as Colin Channer, Elizabeth Nunez, and Oonya Kempeadoo. I went through a phase where I read only the fiction of Caribbean writers, so I’ve got a large collection of that as well. I am surrounded by books.

I’ve been sorting through them, searching for collections of short stories. That’s what I feel like reading. Short stories fascinate me. They are so very brief, and illuminating. And when they’re good, they stay with you. I want something that stays with me.

I’m currently reading Her Wild American Self, Evelina’s debut story collection. The first time I read it was on the five hour plane ride from SFO to JFK after VONA in 2010. I cried the whole way, partially because of Evelina’s writing, which is gorgeous, but also because I didn’t want to return to my life as it was.

Sometimes I think that loving books the way I do doesn’t mean I need to write them. When I was at VONA, I believed that I could write them. Nearly four years later, with barely any new fiction under my belt, maybe I can’t? Maybe my love is just for the experience of reading. Maybe I don’t have to create.

Usually, when I start to feel like this I remind myself of an e-mail that I received, nearly a year ago:

You are too beautiful a writer not to share it with other people.

(thank you, my soul sister. you inspire me more than you know.)

I started a new project. I’m having a hard time with it. I have four books in my cart on Amazon. I think I’m trying to distract myself. If I cloak myself in the words of others, I have no room for my own.

Because Christmas is just a regular work day for me, it’s hard getting into the “spirit” of things.

Last night, I drove my mom to church and she spent the seven minute ride reminiscing about Christmases past:

Allyuh would be so excited. You would stay up so late waiting for Santa. We hid the presents at your grandmother’s and your father had to drive to the Bronx to pick them up at four o’clock in the morning after you went to sleep. And you would gasp when you saw all those presents under the tree. Christmas used to be so much fun. Those were the days.

Christmas now means lots and lots of cleaning. Changing the curtains, beating the rugs outside in the cold. Preparing the sorrel and ginger beer and ponche a creme. Many [failed] attempts at baking my Grams’ bread. My sister and I tell each other what we want and agonize over what to get our mother. This year she dropped the hint that she wanted a new sound system to replace the radio/double tape deck/3 disc player she’s had since I was in high school. The problem is, she wants the same exact thing, and where does one find a double tape deck these days? My sister suggested getting her a bluetooth speaker since Marvs has an iPhone now. I knew that wouldn’t work because she does NOT know how to use her iPhone other than to make phone calls and to send the occasional text, and that was all she had the energy to learn. What do you get a person like this? A gift certificate for spa services. Nice and simple. We help her decorate the tree and season the turkey breast, slice up the ham my uncle sends from Texas every year, wash and dry all of the china and replace it neatly in her breakfront. It’s not Christmas until the entire house is spotless.

And of course, I get up and go to work. By the time I get home, the presents have been opened, dinner is done, and the leftovers are already packed away–Marvs likes to invite a Nigerian family visiting her church to dinner. She also likes to eat early. So I make myself a plate and eat in my room alone until my sister wakes up (after being on call) or comes home from visiting her boyfriend’s family.

Christmas just isn’t so magical anymore.

Anyway. I hope all five of you who read this enjoy your day. Save me a slice a pie or something.